Single moms seek answers at session

Workshop follows up on recent Tribune series.

Workshop follows up on recent Tribune series.

June 15, 2006|JOSEPH DITS Tribune Staff Writer

SOUTH BEND -- "I think we need a support system," says single mother Kelly Thrall, toting two bike helmets: one for her and one for her 6-year-old son. Wednesday was a lovely day for a ride, but they are cyclists only because their finances are tight. Thrall and her son walked for transportation last year. Then someone gave her a car. It lasted a few months until it needed a costly repair. She couldn't afford it. This year they got bikes. She turns to a group of fellow single moms who came to a workshop for wisdom on juggling jobs, children and life. "What I'm trying to get away from is people who want to tell me what to do," says Thrall, 29. "They have expectations that I feel I cannot fill." She was among 31 single moms who came to the workshop at St. Patrick Parish that followed up on the recent series in The Tribune titled "Where's Daddy?: How single motherhood affects the community." Some were sad, some were hungry for help. They found answers and moral support. "I want to travel the world and preach the gospel," says Thrall, a pre-law student at Indiana University South Bend. She hopes to use her eventual law degree to help women abroad who are abused and lack any legal defense. Community nurse Bettye Green advises the mothers, "Once you have a baby, so many changes happen to your body." Even a young teenager's body becomes more like an adult's, she says. That's why, she says, mothers need yearly appointments with a physician who can check for diabetes, hypertension, hearing problems and a range of issues. Erica Howard says that she has neglected to see a doctor because she isn't aware of a physician with evening hours. She leaves her customer service job in Nappanee at about 5:30 or 6 p.m. each day, commutes 40 miles one way to her South Bend home and picks up her children at day care. "I am very busy," says Howard, who hopes to finish her bachelor's degree next year at Indiana University South Bend. "Even to call off of work is seriously hard." She was more successful living in Chicago, she says, because she had more support there. But you have to know how to find help. Howard took her children to the public library in downtown South Bend for the first time on Tuesday (a vacation day) and spent four hours engrossed in story time and many other ways to enrich the family. "And it was free!" she says. In a seminar about surviving the work force, Michele Cephus says she recently left a job as a nursing assistant at a nursing home. "Nursing is a very high stress level," she says. "I got talked to by someone (a boss) where I started crying." She hopes to find another kind of work, though she'd go back to nursing if she had to. She wonders whether employers in those other fields would understand, especially when nursing is so rich in job openings. "That would be my first question," admits Fran Leedy, customer service manager for the Notre Dame Bookstore, who leads the seminar. She says she looks for employees who will stay a while, not work a few months and then leave during the hectic rush of Notre Dame home football games. How, Cephus asks, can an employee deal with cranky supervisors? Don't approach the boss during busy times, Leedy says, adding, "My staff knows that the first couple of weeks (of the football season) to stay away from me." Leedy came to the business at the bottom 23 years ago -- no college degree -- and worked her way up. She advises moms to ask lots of questions at the beginning of a job because, "I'm not going to think of everything that is going to make you a success." WSBT-TV reporter Angela Ingram speaks of the power the moms can yield. When Ingram dreamed of becoming a TV reporter, a man bluntly told her she had to lose 60 pounds and lose her Philadelphia accent. It ticked her off. Then she accomplished both tasks, pulling inspiration from her own mother, a single mom who raised her child in a decent neighborhood in spite of the way Ingram's dad neglected to pay child support. If your kids' father talks badly of you to your kids, don't copy it, she advises. "A child will internalize and think there's something wrong with him or her," Ingram says. Instead, tell your children, "We are going to say a prayer for Daddy. Mom and Dad need to work things out." Staff writer Joseph Dits: jdits@sbtinfo.com (574) 235-6158